Did you collect enough eggs from your chicken farm? When was the last time you sent your friend a virtual cupcake? If you participate in two of Facebook’s popular external applications, then you are aware of what I’m talking about.

Now with more than 400 million users and 500,000 active applications that users can connect with, it’s obvious that most of us are jumping on Facebook for reasons other than finding out what our best friend from 8th grade did this past weekend.

For many companies, having a simple fan/company page is no longer enough to communicate with its target audience about client information or recent news. Such interactive entertainment applications like Farmville, Birthday Cards, iLike, Top Friends, and Mafia Wars demonstrate that millions of consumers on this social platform are interested in playing games, interacting with their friends, sharing personal interests and forming teams for a great cause—key traits that any marketer can and should easily incorporate into real-life interactive campaigns.

With 70 percent of Facebook users engaging with some of these interactive applications every month, it’s time to find out more about this strategy. Consider the following for effective application implementation:

1. Allow team building to be a factor for success: participants enjoy coming together for a greater cause and making a large difference all together. On Facebook, sharing is very much caring. Example: Best Buy has online “Best Buy Communities” that help answer customer questions and assist in finding the best price possible for products.

2. Make it easy to interact with your company: one-click downloads, photo uploads, donations, and “forward to a friend” buttons will help spread your message quickly. Example: T-Mobile Blackberry has simple “download now” buttons for wallpapers, applications, and tips of the week.

3. Have a variety of communication tools available for use: Captivate people’s attention by offering videos, photos, music, ability to make wall posts, and direct chat. Example: American Red Cross posts live video updates from natural disasters.

4. Make your page visually appealing: Colors, shapes, fonts, and placement of accomplishments on personal profiles will spark the interests of consumers. Example: Target allows fans to flip through an online magazine and mix and match new product lines.

5. Offer a “game mentality”: It always feels good to reach a set goal. Set goals for participants and they will thrive on the instant gratification. Example: Chase Community Giving encourages its Facebook fans to vote for their favorite charity to receive money, then Chase makes the donation on their behalf.

Are you a fan of any interactive applications? If so, are they missing from my list? We want to hear about what you do on Facebook and what makes you choose to participate.

As communicators, we read and write a lot of content. In fact, I’ve heard that the average consumer takes in 30 GB of content per day, so I can only imagine how much more is read by professional marketers. (This is what I tell myself so I don’t feel so bad for not reading every “must read” book and white paper out there.) But, over the holidays, I got caught up on my booklist by reading one of the most talked about marketing books of the year–Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith.

The book focuses on the value of trust in online communities where transparency is king, communication tools are endless and efficient, and cynicism among consumers is at an all-time high. Through online research, the book states, “We are currently living in a communications environment where there is a trust deficit. As a society, we no longer have confidence in advertising. We are hostile to those who appear to have ulterior motives, even if they’re just selling themselves.”

So how do you break through the clutter and gain the trust of your key influencers and audience? The book’s authors outline six characteristics of Trust Agents, including:

1. Make Your Own Game: Be a game changer and stand out among the crowd.
2. One of Us: Belong to the communities where your audience belongs. Talk like they talk. Read what they read. Spend time where they spend time. Engage in conversation with them without selling something.
3. The Archimedes Effect: Leverage the Web to extend your power, reach and influence.
4. Agent Zero: Build and maintain your network to give you greater access and opportunities. We’re way beyond the point of creating relationships by passing out resumes and business cards.
5. Human Artist: It’s a consumer’s world and the buyer is always in control. The good ol’ Golden Rule has never been more important for online etiquette. This section also has an awesome quote–“In social media, human is the new black.” It’s not the tools–it’s the relationship that matters.
6. Build an Army: Use your relationships and built-upon trust to gather a mass movement. A collaborative group can always accomplish more than an individual alone.

The biggest takeaway I gained from this book affirmed the social media approach we take at CMD: listen to audiences before joining the conversation and defining the strategy. A conversation is a two-way street–you can’t shout your marketing messages and expect your audience to engage with you. Rather, you have to listen to what they’re saying and respond where you have the expertise to do so.

Have you read Trust Agents? I’d like to know your thoughts about the book, and if you have any other book suggestions to add to my ever-increasing list.

The year 2009 will undoubtedly go down as the year that Twitter exploded onto the communications scene. With so much attention and interest, Twitter gave us a new and interesting way to engage in two-way conversations with people, clients and customers, as well as take advantage of a plethora of off-shoot companies built to service the microblogging site. Also, due to Twitter, breaking news that was usually delivered 45 minutes or more after an event is now delivered in a mere 45 seconds.

To help our clients keep up-to-date on Twitter best practices, the CMD Earned Media team has presented numerous Twitter how-to seminars over the past year, guiding and showing how to use the channel strategically and addressing the basics of getting started. (See our earlier blog post on our Twitter 101 session for local Portland media.) We recently held a seminar for our CMD colleagues to offer insight and best practices to those who wanted to learn more and get started. The session was spirited and full of interesting questions, including these five:

Q: I’ve set up a Twitter account, but really, why should I be on it?
A: We all use social media to communicate in various ways. Some people use it to keep in touch with family and friends. For business-savvy users, you can listen to what is being said about your clients, research your competition, find recent news pertaining to an industry and connect with media and people who share common interests. If you’re interested in what others are interested in, then Twitter is for you.

Q: What type of information should I list in my profile?
A: It’s important to note that all information on your Twitter profile is searchable, which means that what you tweet will show up in real-time search results based on keywords that you use. Make it easy for people to find you by listing the company you work for, your current location, occupation and interests. Now that Twitter search results show up on Google and general Web search, it’s more important than ever to ensure that what you’re twittering is relevant and interesting, and not just a space-filler, i.e. “I’m eating lunch.”

Q: How do I develop followers or find people to follow?
A: There are many ways to develop followers. For example: using Twitter’s search bar, doing a Google search, or using one of our favorite free tools, www.twellow.com. Twellow is like the Yellow Pages of Twitter – with over 12.5 million profiles listed, you can harness your following/followers by looking up your favorite hobby, the industry you work in, location and more.

Q: What if I accidently share something on Twitter that I did not want to?
A: As we like to remind our clients, once you send a tweet, it technically lives forever in the “twittersphere.” Sure, Twitter offers the ability to delete a tweet (when you hover over your update when viewing your home or profile page, you’ll see a trash can at the end of the update), but there is no way to prevent it from ever not turning up in search results. When in doubt, re-read what you’re about to tweet to make sure you’re comfortable with the message.

Q: Can I update multiple social media channels at once?
A: Yes. We are busy people, and managing different social media profiles takes time. If you are interested in integrating both your Facebook and Twitter profiles simultaneously, visit: http://www.ping.fm/ (another favorite tool of ours). Also, LinkedIn has recently been enabled for Twitter updates, so your tweets can appear in your network updates section.

Questions? Tweet us @CMDPortland. We’re here to help.

After the release of Microsoft’s latest search engine investment, Bing http://www.bing.com, there was an onslaught of credible and non-credible reviews of everything from its underlying technology to the choice of its name. The most ironic comments were from many a Scotsman; the word “bing” in Scotland can also refer to a wastepile.

In Google’s Technology Overview http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html, the perfect search engine is defined by co-founder Larry Page as something that “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want.” Anyone who’s recently committed a search query to the annals of Google’s SERPs (search engine results pages) does realize this is more of a quest than current reality.

I’m not here to pore over discovery into the poor makings of a search engine, nor wax poetic on the glorious wonders of search visualization, however, part of what I get paid to do and definitely what drives me as a digital strategist is to understand current technology trends and to glance into the future to identify what brands should be paying attention to.

The reality is that semantic and visual search options are here. And, if you’re a big brand relying on the 90% (and growing) market share that Google and its partners in SERPs Yahoo and Bing hold, you’re playing the right odds. But, for every monolithic corporation there are a handful of visionaries and technologists that are willing to take a risk at making something better and more powerful for the user.

That said, there’s a movement around the creation of common information structures. The W3C has published guidelines at http://www.w3.org/RDF/FAQ on participating in the Semantic Web. It’s also worth looking at Common Tag http://commontag.org and others on the development of an open tagging format. On April 13, 2009, Arun Radhakrishnan wrote a post on Search Engine Journal regarding “9 Semantic Search Engines That Will Change the World of Search,” http://www.searchenginejournal.com/semantic-search-engines/9832/, and I believe he and others are definitely onto something. The crux of the situation is that users still want the fastest route from query to results; but the majority of those users doesn’t necessarily care or understand its relevance. So cycling aficionado that I am, I decided to dive into some searches.

In a quick comparison of Hakia (one of the aforementioned “9”) vs. champion Google for the term “Tour de France,” each yielded similar results. Even though Hakia was developed by looking closer at ontology and semantic rankings, it really doesn’t yet take advantage of many Web assets. And, it’s still text-based, so the results cannot be custom tailored visually.

When I started to play with the visual search engines, the real fun began for this cycling enthusiast (and admitted right-brainer). The power of the visual cloud, like seeing what you’re searching for in Searchme, was compelling.

And, Viewzi offered several different views into its results. The more visually delicious options are the Google Timeline and the Photo Tag Cloud (shown here).

Last on my Tour de Search is Spezify, a search tool utilizing relevant, free and open APIs to generate a more diverse set of results. Although more traditional SERPs have options to view blogs, microblogs, social resources, e-commerce, images, etc., it’s impressive to see the free associated relationships drawn up in a visual mind map based on keywords, tags, titles and content.

So, what’s the real takeaway for a brand navigating the Semantic Web and visual search aggregation?

The answer can be simple: The User Experience. It’s why we have strategists, information architects, user experience engineers, information and visual designers. It can also be complex, as the art of search engine optimization (SEO) is being redefined.

The aficionado of your brand may not use the path most traveled; from a desktop on the leading browser or from the leading search engine. What’s a critical failure? How about when a user, expecting to see visual results from your brand instead receives the “In order to view this page you need JavaScript, Flash Player, or Flash Player 8+” message?

For instance, many of the web assets from one of my favorite personal brands, Nike, are not accessible from my favorite device, the iPhone, using its native OS Safari browser. When I don’t have JavaScript or Flash Player installed on Firefox or Chrome or Internet Explorer, the same falls true. Until Windows Mobile 7, Google Android’s newest native browser, and future versions of the iPhone OS Safari browser are released, I still won’t be able to consume the visual layer or search in this new visual sense.

As to my original Tour de France reference, right now it’s less about seeing who takes the yellow jersey (maillot jaune) awarded to the best overall rider and more about appreciating who wins the white jersey (maillot blanc) given to the best up-and-coming youngster.